Coca Cola: We Don't Need To Make A Cane Sugar Version Because You Already Have Mexican Coke

A few weeks back, we asked readers if they would buy a cane sugar version of Coca Cola and an overwhelming 89% of you said “yes.” So Consumerist asked Coke if the company had any plans to introduce non-HFCS version — a la Pepsi Throwback — on a national scale. The answer — no, because we already have Mexican Coke.

“We already provide a Coca-Cola with sugar in the U.S. – is Coca-Cola from Mexico and it’s available year round,” Greg Galvez, vice president and general manager of Importation and Commercialization, Coca-Cola North America, told Consumerist.

Galvez appears to contradict himself on the topic of cane sugar vs. High Fructose Corn Syrup.

First he tells us that the reason for going national — though only “in select grocery stores and bodegas that appeal to a high percentage of Hispanic consumers” — with the cane sugar Mexican Coke was that: “For some Hispanics, the familiarity of Coca-Cola with cane sugar and in a tall glass bottle they recognize is a reassuring ‘piece of home.'”

But then, when asked if there is any difference in taste between Coca Cola sweetened with cane sugar and Coke with HFCS, he replied that “our research shows that there is no perceptible taste difference between the products. Whether sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or sugar, a Coke is a Coke and both are ‘the real thing.'”

If one of the reasons Hispanic immigrants drink the Mexican Coke is the cane sugar, doesn’t that imply that there is a difference in taste? And if there’s no taste difference between the two, then the only reason to import or drink Mexican Coke is because it’s in a glass bottle?